Adventurers will be tested like never before in 4.3 as they take on Deathwing and his minions, emerging with powerful new treasures. Please enjoy this preview of the priest tier 13 set, as well as a visual guide to tiers 1 through 12 for Transmogrification purposes.

Vestments of Dying Light

Priests (and paladins for that matter) are often the most challenging classes to design ‘badass’ armor sets for, in contrast to the death knight and warlock, whose underlying concepts demand the unquestionably cool dark and sinister approach.

In this instance, however, the design asked for a bold, two-tone, ‘Venetian carnival style with creepy, soulless black eyes,’ which gave me a powerful, potentially edgy direction to explore. The set’s ‘Dying Light’ theme was visualized as a spiked, setting sun motif.

BlizzCon 2011 just got even better with today’s announcement that the
closing concert for this year’s show will be headlined by none other
than Foo Fighters. The multi-platinum rockers will take the stage to
close out the convention with a set drawn from the many iconic anthems
of their 16-year career. We also announced today that The Artist
Formerly Known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, Blizzard’s in-house
metal band, will be returning to BlizzCon this year and will open for
Foo Fighters. Tickets to the convention are currently sold out, but the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, which offers multi-channel Internet streaming worldwide, is still available. Check out the official announcement for more information.

Holy Radiance has been revamped - Imbues a friendly target with radiant energy, healing that target and all party or raid members within 10 yards for 50 to 61 and another 683 every 1 sec for 3 sec and grants a charge of Holy Power. 40 yd range, 40% of base mana, 3 sec cast

Mental Quickness has been slightly revamped - Your spell power is now equal to 55% of your attack power, and you no longer benefit from other sources of spell power. Also, your instant beneficial, damaging, and totem spells cost 75% less mana.

Stormstrike no longer increases Nature damage against the target. Now grants you an additional 25% chance to critically strike that enemy with your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lightning Shield, and Earth Shock spells for 15 sec.

Improved Lava Lash now increases the damage of Lava Lash by 10% for each application of Searing Flames, now also causes your Lava Lash to spread your Flame Shock from the target to up to four enemies within 12 yards.

Unleashed Rage now increases melee attack power by 20% and ranged attack power by 10%.

Restoration

Ancestral Healing got an extra effect - heals you cast increase allies' maximum health by 10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of their health.

Shattering Throw no longer scales from Attack Power. (This change is NOT in the official notes and could be a parsing error)

Thrown

Throw now has a 0.5 sec cast time. (This change is NOT in the official notes and could be a parsing error)

Public Test Realm Patch 4.3 Notes

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

General

North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change.

Transmogrification

This new feature allows players to customize their gear like never before. You'll find Transmogrification, Void Storage, and Reforging vendors in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar. The costs associated with this service are not yet final.

Void Storage

In addition to the bank, players will now have access to a new "deep storage" system, allowing characters to free bag space by setting aside coveted gear. You'll find Transmogrification, Void Storage, and Reforging vendors in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar. The costs associated with this service are not yet final.

Reforging

The former Reforging vendors have been... retired. The ethereals have chosen to take over the business and joined their Transmogrification and Void Storage service providers. You'll find them in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar.

Outland & Northrend Quest Flow

The amount of experience needed to gain levels 71 through 80 has been reduced by approximately 33%.

Many Group quests in Outland and Northrend have been re-tuned to allow players to complete them solo. They are no longer labeled as Group quests.

Relevant questgivers have been moved into Outland and Northrend dungeons. The majority of dungeon quests for these zones are now available from within their respective dungeons.

Vengeance for Protection warriors, Protection paladins, Blood death knights, and Feral druids has been redesigned slightly. It no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken by the tank generates Vengeance equal to 33% of the damage taken by that attack. In addition, as it updates periodically during the fight, it's always set to at least 33% of the damage taken by the tank in the last 2 seconds. It still climbs from that point at the rate it did previously, still decays when damage is not taken, and still cannot exceed a maximum based on the health and Stamina of the tank.

Threat generated by classes in active tanking modes has been increased to 500% damage done, up from 300%. This applies to druids in Bear Form, death knights in Blood Presence, warriors in Defensive Stance, and paladins with Righteous Fury active.

Death Knight

Death Strike now heals the death knight whether or not the attack misses, or is dodged/parried. As a result of this change, Death Strike no longer refunds its rune cost if it fails to hit the target, as the death knight will still receive the healing effect.

Blood

Blade Barrier has been redesigned. It now passively reduces damage taken.

Bone Shield now has 6 charges, up from 4.

Veteran of the Third War now reduces the cooldown of Outbreak by 30 seconds.

Druid

Wrath has a new spell effect.

Restoration

Wild Growth healing has been reduced by 20%.

Glyphs

Glyph of Shred has been renamed Glyph of Bloodletting, and now also causes Mangle (Cat) to extend the duration of Rip, in addition to its existing Shred functionality.

Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown on Wild Growth by 2 seconds.

Hunter Coming soon.

Mage Coming soon.

Paladin

Holy Radiance now has a 3.0-second cast time, no cooldown, and requires a player target. That target is imbued with Holy Radiance, which heals them and all group members within 10 yards instantly, and continues to heal them by a smaller amount every 1 second for 3 seconds.

Seal of Insight, when Judged, no longer returns 15% base mana to the paladin. Judging Seal of Insight still causes damage, and melee attacks will still restore 4% of base mana.

Holy

Clarity of Purpose now also reduces the cast time of Holy Radiance.

Illuminated Healing (mastery) now also applies to Holy Radiance.

Infusion of Light now applies its cast time reduction from Holy Shock critical effects to Holy Radiance, in addition to its current effects.

In addition to providing haste, the effect from Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 10/20/30% for 60 seconds.

Light of Dawn now affects 6 targets (base effect), up from 5.

Paragon of Virtue now lowers the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 seconds, up from 10/20 seconds.

Speed of Light no longer triggers from Holy Radiance and no longer lowers the Holy Radiance cooldown. Speed of Light now only triggers from Divine Protection.

Tower of Radiance, in addition to its current effects, now also causes Holy Radiance to always generate 1 charge of Holy Power at all times.

Glyphs

Glyph of Light of Dawn now lowers the number of targets to 4, instead of increasing targets to 6, but increases healing by 25%.

Priest

Divine Hymn now affects 5 targets, up from 3.

Discipline

Atonement will now account for the target enemy's combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala'kir.

Divine Aegis has a new spell effect.

Holy

Spirit of Redemption has been rebuilt to address a few functionality issues and make it more responsive. Spirit of Redemption otherwise remains unchanged.

State of Mind has been redesigned and is now called Heavenly Voice. Heavenly Voice increases the healing done by Divine Hymn by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 2.5/5 minutes.

Glyphs

Glyph of Circle of Healing now also increases the mana cost of Circle of Healing by 20%.

Rogue Coming soon.

Shaman

Flametongue Weapon no longer increases spell damage. It now increases all non-physical damage done by the wielder by 5%.

Lightning Bolt has a new spell effect.

Wind Shear now has a 25-second base cooldown, up from 6 seconds.

Elemental

Call of Flame no longer causes Fire Nova to extend the duration of Flame Shock.

Earthquake damage has been increased by roughly 75%.

Elemental Fury now removes the cooldown from Chain Lightning.

Reverberation now reduces the cooldown of Wind Shear by 10/20 seconds, up from 0.5/1 second.

Enhancement

Improved Lava Lash now causes Lava Lash to spread a Flame Shock debuff from the target to up to 4 nearby targets. This excludes crowd-controlled targets and those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman.

Improved Lava Lash no longer increases base Lava Lash damage by 15/30%. This increase has been rolled into the base Lava Lash skill.

Mental Quickness has been redesigned. Instead of granting the shaman spell power, Mental Quickness now causes Enhancement shaman spells to behave as though the shaman has spell power equal to 55% of attack power. Enhancement shaman spells no longer benefit from spell power from other sources.

Restoration

Ancestral Healing now also causes the shaman's heals to increase the target's maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target's maximum health, for 15 seconds. This effect does not stack if multiple Restoration shaman are present, and does not apply to heals from procs.

Riptide's periodic healing coefficient has been increased by 50%. The initial direct heal is unchanged.

Warlock

Shadow Bolt has a new spell effect.

Warrior Coming soon.

Dungeons & Raids

Dungeon Journal entries have been added for the new dungeons: End Time, Well of Eternity, Hour of Twilight, and Dragon Soul.

Bosses in Ruins of Ahn'qiraj now drop a rare-quality Scarab Coffer Key which can be used to open the Scarab Coffers found within. These keys are zone-bound to Ruins of Ahn'qiraj and have a 17-hour expiration. This change also applies to Greater Scarab Coffer Keys used to open Large Scarab Coffers.

Races

The orc racial Blood Fury now increases spell power rather than only spell damage.

User Interface

Archaeology areas of interest will now show on the mini-map, in addition to the World Map.

Guilds with inactive guild leaders can now usurp the leader under specific conditions. More information on this coming soon.

The Reforging interface has been updated and improved.

Quest Tracking areas or points of interest will now show on the mini-map, in addition to the World Map.

The World Map now displays the expected character levels for each zone.

Bag Search

A search field has been added to allow players to search bag, bank, guild bank, and Void Storage inventories for specific items.

D3 are generally provided by magical properties, much like other prefixes and suffixes (Source)Sockets are effectively customizable magical property slots, so in many ways sockets are better than just random affixes. You can choose the benefit you get on that item, and as you find better gems you can remove and replace them, allowing you to keep the item relevantly powerful without finding/crafting a complete replacement. It’s also worth noting not every item type can have gem slots, so crafting an item with a guaranteed socket is usually a nothing-but-positive bonus on that recipe. You get to choose the benefit for the socket instead of, in most cases, having it roll a random affix.

Bored Players, no new content (Source)I totally understand that people are done with the content and want more, and I only see that as a positive outlook for the future. If people were completing the content, or worse not completing it, and then ambivalent or uncaring to see any more of the game then we’d have a problem. Yes we fully understand people would love to play more content, but no we’re not going to release any more during the beta phase. The test is mainly intended for server stability and hardware/software compatibility testing, and not for content bug testing. For that reason we really only need provide a small bit of content to get the majority of our beta testing jollies.

We really do appreciate everyone that has been playing, and continues to play, but if you’re done and have done everything you can to help provide us with feedback/bugs, then we don’t want you to feel obligated to keep playing. As older testers drop off and server stability increases we’ll be adding more and more people. There’s no real downside in that.

Runestone Set Bonuses (Source)Yeah it’s something that’s been discussed, the main challenge with such a system is striking a balance between ‘fun bonus’ and ‘you must socket runes this way or you’re playing wrong’. The runestones as they are add an insane amount of customization, and we’re really happy with the way they’re playing out and the insane amounts of fun you can have with them. We think we have enough customization and system complexity for launch, but undoubtedly after release and as the game ages we’ll want to mix it up in some new ways.

Gear +Skill Bonuses (Source)To clarify the terms being used, we don’t ever foresee adding any ability to gain another classes’ skills through items. Some people call these +skill affixes, such as the infamous Enigma and granting the Teleport skill to anyone and everyone. So just to avoid confusion it’d be a good idea to define what you mean by +skill. What the OP seems to be referring to are affixes that are bonuses to the skills you already have. So in that case an item could drop with +% damage to Bash, and so that one line on the item tooltip would only benefit barbarians, of course.

I should take a step back and say not every skill scales the same way, and not every skill benefits from the same stats – in general skills do scale with your level – but ultimately benefit the most from the items you find and equip.

We do really like the concept of the affixes that benefit specific class skills, or potentially even classes of skills. As I’ve stated before we’re not done with affixes, and so it’s a matter of getting in as many as we can before launch. Having full power ranges of affixes that benefit all class skills is a pretty enormous undertaking, but in any case the underlying concept is something we would probably like to have in the game at some point.

Lack of mod support / permission in Diablo III (Source)…given Blizzard’s rich history of allowing user modification, and just how much it’s given to so many of their previous games, it’s hard to not feel let down by the decision to outright ban Diablo 3 modding. Let’s hope they have a change of heart on that point particularly. I’m still at a loss as to how this became an issue. Do people think mods were supported in Diablo and Diablo II? Or is there an expectation that since WoW we want to allow UI modification, and/or since our RTS games have all had map editors we want to begin adding that to the Diablo franchise? I guess it just comes across to me as a reaction based on the perception that we’re changing something, as opposed to just making more Diablo games.

We’d like to remind those looking forward to an invite to the Diablo III beta to be wary of phishing attempts. If you believe you’ve received an invite to the Diablo III beta test, it’s best to refrain from clicking on any links in the email, and instead log in to your Battle.net account to see if a Diablo III beta game account was granted. And remember, Blizzard will NEVER ask for your password! For more information on account security please visit http://eu.battle.net/en/security/